Education Secretary Betsy DeVos Is Sued Over Sexual Assault Guidance

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Education Secretary Betsy DeVos on Thursday in Washington. In September, she rescinded Obama-era guidance on how colleges should manage sexual assault investigations under Title IX.CreditChip Somodevilla/Getty Images

WASHINGTON — Victims’ rights and women’s rights groups sued Education Secretary Betsy DeVos on Thursday, saying that rules that she issued last year to guide campuses on how to manage sexual assault complaints violated federal law and discriminated against accusers.

Three organizations, represented by prominent civil rights litigators, filed a complaint in the Northern District of California outlining ways that the guidance issued by Ms. DeVos in the fall had had a “chilling effect” on campus sexual assault investigations.

Since the guidance was issued, the groups charged, accusers have been less inclined to pursue sexual assault cases, and colleges have demonstrated a lack of urgency and clarity in pursuing them.

In September, Ms. DeVos rescinded Obama-era guidance on how colleges should manage the investigations under Title IX, the federal law that prohibits sex discrimination and governs the rules on investigating sexual assault on campus.

A spokeswoman for the department declined to comment, citing pending litigation.

Under Ms. DeVos’s administration, the department has continued to open sexual assault cases and has maintained a contentious Obama-era practice of publishing a list of campuses with open investigations.

Last week, in an abrupt and unannounced move, the department began publishing a database of all pending civil rights cases. According to the database, which is to be updated monthly, the department is investigating 773 sexual harassment cases and 480 sexual violence cases.

The Obama-era guidance, issued in 2011 and 2014, reinforced the obligation of colleges and universities to respond to sexual assault claims and was widely hailed as strengthening protections for accusers amid increasing evidence that those institutions were skirting their responsibilities to investigate sexual misconduct. But it was widely assailed by men’s rights and conservative civil liberties groups as heavily biased against the accused.

In an extensive policy speech announcing the new guidance, Ms. DeVos outlined what she described as a “failed system” that violated students’ due process rights and lacked public confidence.

“Schools must continue to confront these horrific crimes and behaviors head-on,” Ms. DeVos said in September. “But the process must also be fair and impartial, giving everyone more confidence in its outcomes.”

Ms. DeVos issued interim guidance that raised the standard of proof for accusers to “clear and convincing evidence” from a “preponderance of evidence” and allowed cases to be settled in mediation sessions between the accuser and the accused. It also dropped time frames for completing investigations.

“The new policy discriminates against women and girls and makes it harder for them to learn in a safe environment,” said Fatima Goss Graves, the president of the National Women’s Law Center, which is representing the litigants in the suit.

The plaintiffs in the suit, Equal Rights Advocates, SurvJustice and the Victim Rights Law Center, all advise or represent people who say they were sexually assaulted. The groups are being represented by Equal Rights Advocates, Democracy Forward Foundation, the National Center for Youth Law and the National Women’s Law Center.

In the complaint, SurvJustice said that the group had not only seen “a decrease in the number of sexual violence survivors seeking its services,” but also observed a trend in educational institutions not responding at all, or not responding as promptly to its clients’ complaints.

The group also wrote of “students who have questioned whether they should continue with their plans to report sexual violence given the uncertainty regarding their legal protections and an anticipated lowered likelihood of success created by the policy change.”

The Victims Rights Law Center, which focuses its efforts on rape and sexual assault, said Ms. DeVos’s guidance was “devastating” to its mission and operational activities.

The groups are asking that the guidance be rescinded as unlawful.

“With each day that passes, this discriminatory policy will continue to cause harm to survivors of sexual harassment and violence,” said Alice Y. Abrokwa, a lawyer at the National Center for Youth Law.

In their complaint, the groups wrote that Ms. DeVos and her acting leader of civil rights, Candice Jackson, made statements that revealed their bias against accusers.

They cited Ms. DeVos’s policy address during which she asserted that “if everything is harassment, then nothing is,” and Ms. Jackson’s dismissal of women who accused President Trump of sexual harassment as “fake victims.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A15 of the New York edition with the headline: DeVos Is Sued Over Policy On Campus Sexual Assault. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe